Ebony wood sextant; with maker's name centrally and the angle scale (now warped), both inscribed on bone.

Ship's Sextant
This Ebony and Bone sextant was made by the firm of
Spencer, Browning and Rust, sometime between 1784 and 1840. It is marked London, but the firm is known to have
shipped sextants in component form to assemblers in Scotland and the United
States. The case is lined with charts from the East Coast of England (Lowestoft
to the River Humber). The practice of lining cases with out of date maps continues in the
nautical and aviation worlds to this day, and indicates only that the case was
probably lined somewhere in England.
The sextant belonged at some point to Capt. Merriman of the
Brig ‘Shooting Star’, as this is handwritten inside the case. The ‘Shooting
Star’ was not a naval vessel, so was probably a civilian cargo ship. An excerpt
from the New York Times dated 27th January, 1867, reports the
abandonment of the ‘Shooting Star’ on the 17th, and the safe landing
at Newport, RI, of Capt. Allen and his crew by the Brig ‘Albatross’ who took
them off. The ship was caught in a gale on the 12th, and obliged to
cut away her masts. This was likely necessary due to a partial dismasting,
after which the remainder would need to be cut away to avoid the loose parts
holing the hull in the stormy seas. Unfortunately, removing the high masts
makes a ship roll much more rapidly and with larger amplitude, so with the sea
likely to have had significant waves for days afterwards, abandonment became
the only option. This sextant, the chronometer, and the Ship’s log were probably the only items the Captain brought with him off the ship when it was abandoned. The ship’s hull may not
have sunk immediately – some abandoned hulls were known to have drifted around
the oceans for years, and led to many a ghostly tale!
So, how did this sextant end up on P.E.I.? It may have been assembled in the United States, or brought over by a British Captain. We can surmise
that Capt. Merriman sold the sextant to the next Captain of the 'Shooting Star',
either because he was retiring, or out of work afterwards, or trading up to a
better (metal) sextant. Thus it remained with the ship and eventually came in
the possession of Shooting Star’s last Captain.
Captain Allen may have sold it in Newport, RI, or taken it to another ship. There
are Allens on P.E.I., so it is also possible that he retired here.Curiously, the provenance of this
sextant was discovered on Jan 27th, 2014, exactly 147 years after it
arrived in Newport, RI, and the author learned to use a sextant in Boston,
Lincolnshire, which is just on the map used to line the case.